'American Buffalo': Director Damashek sees revival as timely

James Carpenter as the explosive Teach in "American Buffalo," the 1975 heist-gone-wrong classic at the Aurora Theatre.

James Carpenter as the explosive Teach in "American Buffalo," the 1975 heist-gone-wrong classic at the Aurora Theatre.

Photo: David Allen

Photo: David Allen

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James Carpenter as the explosive Teach in "American Buffalo," the 1975 heist-gone-wrong classic at the Aurora Theatre.

James Carpenter as the explosive Teach in "American Buffalo," the 1975 heist-gone-wrong classic at the Aurora Theatre.

Photo: David Allen

'American Buffalo': Director Damashek sees revival as timely

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Anyone fortunate enough to have seen the Magic Theatre's quietly sizzling 1997 production of David Mamet's "Cryptogram" could be excused for assuming that director Barbara Damashek was an old hand at his work. Not so. That rich, dramatic tightrope of a production was her first Mamet. Her Aurora Theatre production of "American Buffalo," the 1975 small-time-heist-gone-wrong that became an instant classic of modern American theater, is her second.

A Tony Award nominee - as co-author, lyricist, composer and director of the Broadway musical "Quilters" - Damashek has directed at least one notable show each year, with companies ranging from ACT and Berkeley Rep to Shotgun in the Bay Area alone, despite the demands of her own writing and full-time job as associate professor of theater arts at San Francisco State University. She took time to answer a few questions by e-mail.

Q: "American Buffalo" is so well known. What drew you to it at this time?

A: It hasn't been done in the Bay Area for over a decade. And in this post-Madoff/Occupy/Real-Estate-Crash America, this and Mamet's other business plays become really prescient, ever-relevant parables for us.

Mythically, the American con artist is a treasured part of our rogues gallery of antiheroes, and no contemporary playwright has captured this territory quite as well as Mamet. "Buffalo" is beautifully constructed, cunningly observed, shamelessly theatrical and also - wickedly funny.

Q:What was your approach going in?

A: There are so many resonances in the script - comedic, existential (Beckett, Pinter), and I always feel a noir suspense in the tensions of his plays. Thematically, this play concerns a subculture of bottom feeders on a junk heap.

In prep, I watched all of "The Wire" (the acclaimed television series on HBO) and was enthralled by the richness of the language. Mamet has the same linguistic richness for me. He writes that he has always loved jargon, the secret languages of systems, codes and signs. But his Mamet-speak is also a basically invented, poetic and unique, rhythmic language.

A: Definitely! Mamet and LaBute have often been tagged as misogynistic, and some of their works are at best ambiguous in this regard. But I feel that at root they are actually lampooning the American male and dissecting him with a scalpel.

And they push the envelope with wit and good old theatricality. They're irreverent and self-critical. We need mischief, I think. We need danger. We need to be unsettled. And where better to do that than in the theater?

Q:Any particular shows on your bucket list of ones to direct?

A: I'm currently transitioning away from a decade as a full-time professor into a space where I can once again address that list. I'm very excited to be working next at Shotgun on "The New Electric Ballroom" by Enda Walsh, an astonishing Irish playwright. And I'm back at the Aurora in January with another bad-boy play by Nicky Silver. I also have some original projects that have been on the back burner. It's a new chapter and a busy time for me.